The Daily Alaska Empire

BY ROY VICKERS
IN THE DARK

SYNOPSIS: Hallie Ellesmore, beautiful young nurse, comes to keep a rendezvous with her fiance at a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound, but finds another, older man there. Feeling strangely drawn to each other, they become acquainted. The man is Saxley Grannock, and is suffering from partial blindness for which he is soon to undergo treatment that will either cure him or leave him totally blind. He cannot see Hallie clearly and refuses to let her tell her name, preferring to remember her only by her voice in case he goes blind. Grannock gives her a tiny ivory rose, however, and says if he is cured he will advertise "To the Ivory Rose--come home." Then he leaves and Lester Broon, Hallie's fiance, arrives. It is discovered that Grannock, nick-named "Socks" by Lester, is his half-brother. Before Lester can inherit his share of the Broon family fortune he must marry a girl approved by Grannock. Hallie decides she does not love Broon after all. Meanwhile she is hired as night nurse for Grannock without his knowledge, on the night he is to undergo treatment for his eyes. Her duty will be to report certain symptoms to Dr. Lytton as soon as they develop.

Chapter 4
THE DARKNESS CLOSES IN
As the old clock in the hall struck midnight, the study door opened. Nurse Casey rose and went softly forward to meet Nurse Ellesmore. Together they stood by the heavily sleeping man.
"He hasn't stirred since ten," said Nurse Casey, in a whisper. "And there's no swelling round the eyes yet."
"You know how to send for Dr. Lytton when the toxin begins to work, don't you? And the doctor is being called at four, anyway, because he really doesn't expect any results before then. I do hope the experiment succeeds, don't you?"
"Yes," assented Hallie.
"I do find it so difficult not to get-well-personal about my patients," Casey confessed.
"If Mr. Grannock goes blind I shall cry myself sick. He's awfully nice. Much nicer than his half-brother, for all his beautiful eyes and his laughing ways."
A slow flush covered Hallie's face.
"The reason I mentioned Mr. Broon," went on Nurse Casey, "is that he isn't home yet and when he does come, he may be noisy."
"Noisy?"
"Well, he very often is slightly intoxicated when he comes home late and then he's noisy."
"Mr. Grannock shan't be disturbed."
Hallie looked at the sleeping man and marvelled at the strangeness of life. When she had received instruction not to return to New York at the end of her holiday but to report to Dr. Lytton she had been glad to think that work would keep her in Southcliff and possibly near the house in which Saxley Grannock was meeting fate. When she had learned that she was actually to be by his side during the encounter she had felt savagely triumphant.
She believed that she had decided not to marry Lester Broon.
An hour passed and another. Grannock still slept. And then, as the clock struck two, Lester returned.
Hallie heard an oath, a crash and a laugh in the hall. Her face contracted with disgust. She stiffened and rose. He was not going up to his room. He was coming to the study.
She opened the door and slipped out.
"You cannot come in here," she said coldly. "Mr. Grannock is sleeping."
"That's exactly why I can come in. Hallie, darling."
"You-you knew I was here!"
"Sweetheart, I engineered it. Went up and told your matron that you were a friend of the family and the only nurse in the world who wouldn't drive old Socks off his nut, and so on and so on."
"You'd no business to interfere. I resent it strongly. I-"
"You can't be angry with me for long," he told her, with his devil-may-care, whispering laugh. "No one ever is."
He made a none too steady movement towards her. His tie was crooked, the sleeve of his dinner-jacket stained with mud.
"Go to your room," she said firmly. "You'll wake Mr. Grannock. And, Lester-you'll get me into awful trouble if I'm found here talking to you. Go! Do, please, go!"
"Come and say good-night to me, then, properly, and I'll be good."
For an instant he looked so steady, so sober and normal that her guard relaxed.
She took a step towards him-and at once his arms were round her. With a strength she had never suspected in him, he lifted her and despite her struggles carried her down the corridor to the hall and across the hall to the drawing-room.
"Lester, are you crazy? I'm on duty-I'm in charge of a patient-Lester, I'll scream---"
He locked the drawing-room door.
"You can scream," he said, "but no one will hear you."
"Unlock the door! Give me that key! Give it to me or I'll get out through the window." She was fighting him wildly, sick with shame.
She darted to the window, opened it and recoiled. The house was built against a hill-side and although the study window opened on to a stone terrace, under the drawing room window the ground dropped away some thirty feet.
"Break your pretty neck if you jump out there," said Lester's thickened voice behind her.
She turned desperately and at the same moment his hand went to his pocket and he threw the key out into the garden below.
"That settles it!" he exclaimed. "Now we'll have a drink in peace."
He sat heavily down and almost at once lost consciousness.
"And I believed I loved him!" she sobbed.
Like a moth, she ran from window to door and door to window. Like a moth she searched the room for something-anything-with which to pick the lock. She hammered on the door and called. At last, she pulled down a picture and made a loop of the wire.
She was still working at the lock when the clock struck four and she heard distant movement in the house.
Again she knocked and called. She was dishevelled, sobbing to herself, shaking with rage and fear. No one answered her and she worked at the lock again.
It yielded unexpectedly.
She tore the door open, sped across the hall and came face to face with Doctor Lytton and Nurse Casey. At sight of them she cried aloud.
"Mr. Grannock? Oh, how-what has happened to Mr. Grannock?"
The doctor looked at her as she herself might look upon some loathsome reptile.
"You'd better get to your room. I'll deal with you later . . . Nurse Casey, get a call through to Dr. Russell. We shall have to tell him that the night nurse deserted her post and Mr. Grannock's sight is practically gone."
(Copyright, 1930, by Roy Vickers)
In tomorrow's chapter, Hallie, disgraced and despairing, faces the consequences of her misfortune.